50 years on, Francophone Africa strives for media freedom

CPJ has joined with African press freedom groups to urge African leaders to end repression of the media as they celebrate 50 years since the end of colonial rule. We will publish a series of blogs this week by African journalists reflecting on the checkered history of press freedom over that period.

This year is the 50th anniversary of independence for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa from colonial powers France and Belgium. To mark the event, French President Nicholas Sarkozy has invited African leaders to Paris for the July 14Bastille Day celebrations. One thing that hasn’t changed much in the last half a century is that the presidents and prime ministers on the Champs Elysees reviewing stand can rest assured that media back home will dutifully report on their speeches and appearances.

Countries in
French-speaking west and central Africa may have modified the one-party rule
and state media monopolies that characterized the region for the first 30 years
after independence but only a handful of nations boast a truly independent and
critical press.

The euphoria among many
local journalists at the fall of the Berlin Wall and an end to Cold War
rivalries playing out on African soil was not followed by the hope for
flourishing of sustained media freedoms. Instead, the 1990s brought terrible
civil wars and genocide in Rwanda.
Those political upheavals did not spell good news for press freedom.

In the last decade,
private media companies have emerged to challenge the state stranglehold on
news and information but European-educated political elites from Dakar to Kinshasa
are rarely shaken by serious investigative or critical reporting.

Broadcasters and newspapers
controlled or influenced by the state still dominate public discourse. The
online revolution that is churning up media landscapes in the Middle East and
Asia and giving voice to hitherto unheard writers has not yet reached most of
sub-Saharan Africa. There, online news sites and news blogs are in their
infancy. Internet use is low, hampered by poverty, poor communications
infrastructure, and even frequent power outages. Those domestic blogs that do
exist reach only a tiny audience and their subject matter rarely rises above
the purely local. In contrast, diaspora French-language websites have become
forums for uncensored news, activism and political dissent. These include U.S.-based
TamTam.info a leading news site on
Niger, Belgium-based Camer.be, a must-read for
expatriate Cameroonians, and Canada-based GuinneeNews, which made up for the absence of daily
newspapers in Guinea by covering this month’s historic election.

Many older Francophone
African journalists lament what they see as a deterioration of standards in
journalism including corruption of the profession by political and commercial
interests. Young reporters who challenge authority do so often at great
personal risk since only a lucky few have the backing of rich or powerful media
outlets. French-language African newspapers are based on the same uncertain
economic model as their counterparts in the West. In fact the independent ones
tend to have tiny circulations, limited to a small number of cities where rates
of literacy and income are higher than in rural areas.

In the last 10 years,
some authoritarian regimes have become more sophisticated in controlling news,
using criminal prosecutions, imprisonment, harassment and intimidation as a
last rather than first resort. Where independent or opposition-backed media
have emerged, ruling elites now use their deeper pockets to buy the latest
technology to modernize old state-controlled outlets or create new ones which
shrink the audience for critical voices. A well financed, technically superior
newspaper like Les Dépêches de Brazzaville in Congo, or the radio station Rema FM in Burundi, have
overshadowed rivals. In countries where press freedom advocates have scored
victories, such as the decriminalization of defamation in Ivory Coast for
example, governments have fought back. The media group Le Réveil in Abidjan has been slapped
with hefty damages for its political coverage in a number of civil libel
judgments which it is appealing. Other forms of soft repression include
withholding of government advertising, denial of publishing and broadcast
licenses and access to capital.

Fortunately
the picture is not uniformly bleak. Radio, particularly private and community
broadcasts, are a growing force. Market entry is relatively cheap. Radio also
overcomes the illiteracy problem and taps into Africa’s
oral tradition. Low-range community stations have sprouted in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, and private radio is thriving across the region whether as
individual businesses or as part of newly formed conglomerates that include
print and TV interests.

Another
hope for news distribution in the region is the popularity of mobile phones and
SMS texting. Without adequate landlines or 4G wireless for Internet carriage,
this relatively low-tech medium might play to Africa’s
ingenuity for low tech fixes.

Robert Mahoney is CPJ’s deputy executive director. He writes and speaks on press freedom, and has led CPJ missions to global hot spots from Iraq to Sri Lanka. He worked as a reporter, bureau chief and editor for Reuters around the world. Follow him on Twitter @RobertMMahoney.

2 comments

Indeed many former colonies are celebrating their jubilee of independence. The red carpet was rolled out for the various authorities and journalists ... which has not always been the case.

Regarding the DRC, we dislike death Floribert Chebeya. An autopsy has been established, and justice should be done because there was indeed an assault causing death.

Continuing to denounce all this injustice and abuse against our voices and our eyes: the journalists.

This is good, very good. I am a journalist living in exile in the past 10 years, and I must say it is not nice living in exile. But I have no choice because of safety reasons. Where I come from can only be likened to a Khmer Rouges concentration camp, where journos disappear, get ambushed by elements allied to the regime and sometimes detained, tortured and killed. Is there any way for you guys to lobby the AU to discuss media freedom at their various summits. As we speak they are busy discussing Sudan, Bashir and Somalia, nothing about how to restore media freedom on the continent. Please do something, we are dying and dying. I am afraid there will no one left after 10 years, and young people will be afraid to study journalism. Thank you CPJ for the job well done do far.